The present invention relates to electronic and printed publishing and provides a mechanism by which text and images for publishing can be prepared and/or edited.
Particularly, but not exclusively, the present invention is directed at the layout of newsholes.
The present invention has application in electronic and printed media, for example newspapers, magazines and computer text systems.
The design of a newspaper provides a particular style and flavour discernible by the reader.
As used in this context, xe2x80x98designxe2x80x99 refers to the graphical rules or guidelines that govern how elements (such as headlines, pictures and text) should be used to construct newsholes, including the number and type of elements which may or may not be used in certain circumstances, the size and position of those elements in each case, direction on suitable typography, and usage of other graphic devices such as borders and colour.
The design style of a newspaper is often considered critical, for a number of reasons. For example, it has great bearing on the newspaper""s xe2x80x9cappealxe2x80x9d to different readers (such as, large heavy headlines in a tabloid, or smaller xe2x80x9cdignifiedxe2x80x9d headlines in a xe2x80x9cqualityxe2x80x9d broadsheet). The readers are attracted to buy the paper and this obviously helps to determine that paper""s market. Designs also serve the purpose of giving the newspaper a unique or distinct look so that they are distinguished from their competitors. For these reasons, very often newspapers spend considerable time, effort and money on determining their design xe2x80x9cstylexe2x80x9d.
Currently, in many publishing environments, the design of a newspaper is controlled by only a few people and is communicatedxe2x80x94often verballyxe2x80x94from one person to another. These people may or may not also be responsible for laying out the newspaper (that is, implementing their own design) but, typically, layout is performed by people who did not determine the design style but who must learn it and implement it as faithfully as possible.
As a result, a number of problems and issues may and do arise with newspaper layout:
1. It is possible for the design to be implemented incorrectly in some cases, due to a misunderstanding or ignorance of its requirements, or pressure of workload, or lack of skill by the layout operator. This may result in a glaring and undesirable deviation from xe2x80x9cstylexe2x80x9d.
2. It is possible under the existing arrangements for the design and style of a newspaper to change over a period of time, due to changing interpretation of how it should be applied, and/or a build-up of a series of minor xe2x80x9cstylesxe2x80x9d inaccuracies. Although this change may be subtle and may occur over a period of a number of years, any change is often noticed by readers of the newspaper, with possible negative effects on the readership of the newspaper.
3. A layout, although it may be creatively faithful to the design guidelines, may be inefficient in its usage of space, resulting in expensive wastage of space and/or less news being put in the paper.
4. Computer systems are available with electronic tools that facilitate the building of layouts. However, these systems will require the layout to be constructed manually using those tools, which is labour-intensive and time-consuming. In addition, these systems provide little or no guidance on the paper""s style and do not assist the layout operator in determining how layouts should be designed. They merely permit the layout operator to build the layout, once the operator has personally determined what should be built.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,390,354 and GB 2,246,102 disclose how newsholes can be arranged to fill a given area (such as a page). However, they could not be used to generate the newsholes themselves.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,829,470, U.S. Pat. No. 5,287,443, U.S. Pat. No. 5,113,488, U.S. Pat. No. 4,755,955 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,079,724 all relate to different aspects of manipulating type and/or images to fit a given shape. These disclosures do not reach the concept of publication design rules, and they would not assist in any way in actually helping to build or determine the newshole design. These inventions address mechanical problems that may arise once it becomes necessary to pour text and/or images into those shapes to fill them up.
The publishing industry suffers from a lack of standard terms to describe common features of the trade: jargon varies widely not just from country to country, but even between publishing houses. To clarify the present disclosure, this brief glossary notes what we have used certain key terms to mean.
Page: This term is standard but may sometimes be confused with xe2x80x9cnewsholexe2x80x9d, described next. A page refers to the physical, printed page or some representation of it, such as a paper or electronic xe2x80x9cdummyxe2x80x9d page which is used for planning and preparing the printed version.
Design: Refers to the graphical rules or guidelines that govern how elements (such as headlines, pictures and text) should be used to construct newsholes, including the number and type of elements which may or may not be used in certain circumstances, the size and position of those elements in each case, direction on suitable typography, and usage of other graphic devices such as borders and colour.
Newshole: We have used this term to describe a component of a page, such as a story or advertisement (typically, we use it to mean xe2x80x9cstoryxe2x80x9d as in editorial reference, but conceptually, xe2x80x9cadvertisementxe2x80x9d also fits). A newshole refers to a portion of a page, which portion has been used for a common purpose or means (such a presenting a story). A page may contain one or many newsholes which are usually discrete from each other. A newshole may itself be comprised of several elements: a story may contain headlines, pictures and text, which together make up the newshole for that story.
Layout: Refers to the way these design guidelines are implemented and actually put into practice in any particular instance.
Layout (or newshole) Element: This refers to the individual elements within a newshole, such as headlines, pictures, graphics, text, captions and so on.
Thus, pages contain newsholes, newsholes contain elements, and Design is the rules and Layout is the implementation of the design.
The present invention seeks to alleviate, at least, one problem associated with the prior art.
The present invention provides a system, apparatus and/or method of preparing or editing text for publishing in which:
a newshole is filled in accordance with a design, and
resizing of the newshole takes place if the fit is not in accordance with predetermined criteria.
Advantageously, if the newshole is resized, any number of the layout element(s) may also be resized.
In another form, the present invention enables the various elements of a newshole to be arranged (sized and positioned) and formatted (styles, using devices such as typography, colour and borders) in a manner that:
I. suits or matches the particular newshole design (presentation) rules of a publication, and or
II. allows the particular size and area of the newshole to be automatically fitted (or filled up) consistent with those design rules, by:
A. allowing the user to predefine relationships between the various components of the newshole, which relationships determine each component""s size and position relative to the others"", and/or
B. permits automatic recalculation of each component""s size and position so that the newshole can be filled.
The present invention determines the shapes that comprise a newshole and/or what those shapes are (what they represent), and/or how big each one is, and/or where each is placed within the newshole.
For simplification purposes, the present invention is called NAILS, an acronym which stands for xe2x80x9cNewspaper Automated Intelligent Layout Systemxe2x80x9d. (However, the present invention is not limited in application to newspapers, but can be used for any electronic or printed media where material is laid out or presented according to a certain style.) NAILS refers to the way the various elements of a newshole may be arranged (sized and positioned) and formatted (styled, using devices such as typography, colour and borders) in a manner that:
I. Suits or matches the particular design (presentation) of a publication and/or
II. Uses resizing to allow the particular size and area of the newshole to be automatically fitted (or filled up) consistent with those design rules.
NAILS achieves these aims by providing any number of the following facilities:
III. It allows the publication""s design style to be defined by providing means whereby the publication can:
A. Predefine suitable layouts and store these into a database and/or
B. Determine and predefine the conditions or circumstances in which each of these layouts may be considered suitable for use and/or
C. Define, for each of these layouts, rules governing the behaviour of each element of layout, as to its size, position and typographic style and so on. This facility allows the publication to predefine relationships between the various components of the newshole, which relationships determine each component""s size and position relative to the others"".
IV. It facilitates the selection and usage of layouts (from a database) in accordance with the predefined design style. To achieve this, it:
A. Allows the user of the database to specify the general type and style of the layout desired for the current newshole, in a quick, easy and intuitive manner and/or
B. Determines which layouts are or are not suitable or correct for usage in the current newshole, in accordance with the predefined rules and taking into account the specified desires of the database user and/or
C. Graphically displays for the user the correct or suitable layouts and allows selection of one of them and/or
D. Prevents the user of the database from selecting unsuitable or incorrect layouts and/or
E. Automatically builds the final layout, including transparently resizing the selected layout and its elements to suit the new size specified by the user, in accordance with the rules that have been defined for that layout and/or
F. Automatically monitors any further edits that the user may make to the layout after it is drawn, and measures these against the predefined design rules. Depending on the nature and circumstances of those changes and the dictates of the predefined design rules, the present invention may further assist the user by: automatically adjusting the layout (or its elements) to accommodate or suit the user""s manual edits; and/or suggesting that an entirely different layout would be more appropriate according to the predefined design style; and/or allowing the user to accept that suggestion, at which point the software may automatically build the new layout and/or use it to replace the previous one.